- The Centre has prohibited ride-hailing services from demanding tips during booking
- The Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines classify such tipping as misleading and manipulative
- Tips must be voluntary and only payable after the completion of the trip
The Centre has cracked down on the practice of ride-hailing services to demand a tip while booking a vehicle. In a notification, the Road Transport Ministry said the practice is against the rules. Such a practice, the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines say, is "misleading, manipulative, or otherwise in violation of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019".
Any tip should be voluntary and can be paid only at the end of the trip, the ministry has said.
"The attention of this Ministry has been drawn to the display by certain ride aggregators of prompts/options such as "Advance Tip", "Choose an Add-on", "Improve your chances of quicker ride confirmation", "A driver may be more likely to accept this trip if you add a tip", or similar interface elements prior to acceptance or completion of a ride," the ministry said in a notification.
But Clause 14.15 of the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines say the tip feature "shall only be visible after the completion of the journey". It should not be available at the time of booking, before the journey begins or during it.
On the app, there should be no feature, prompt, message, add-on, payment option, or user interface element "displayed before completion of the ride that creates an impression that payment of any additional amount may improve ride confirmation, driver acceptance, driver allocation, waiting time, or quality of service", the notification said.
The consumer protection authority had earlier asked the platforms to stop this practice. But despite its direction, prompts to add tip keep mushrooming on apps across the board.
